Silvara: creating a collection

People often ask where our ideas come from, and it's not always easy to trace our steps backward from finished pieces and collections to a single moment. More often than not, we start with multiple half-ideas and while we play we narrow the field, turn things upside down, say "what if" a lot, scrap everything and stumble on one or two brand new ideas and run with them. We expect most of our initial ideas to fail, and find inspiration in the moments when we think we've thought of everything, and find a brand new concept waiting in the rubble.

This collection was no different for us. After playing with a ton of ideas for beads, shapes, and charms, we had an "aha" moment. We absolutely adore the modern fine jewelry trend of asymmetric gemstones (think Mociun, Rosedale, and Wwake). But over at Chapter, we're in love with metal. After playing with freeform moldmaking, we thought, "What if we reproduced traditional gemstones--not just riffing on gem shapes but making beautifully precise metal castings of the gemstone shapes we love in the materials that represent us?" And blam, the collection concept was locked in.

The next step was gathering gemstone shapes to play with. The world of gemstone cuts and shapes is wide and gorgeous, so we gathered more shapes, sizes and varieties of crystal rhinestones than we could ever hope to fit into one collection. Then it was time to start moving puzzle pieces around and finding beauty in the combinations we discovered.

So many ideas. We played with proportions, sizes, Ideas and pairings were built up, torn down, restructured, forgotten about and rediscovered. When we finally narrowed our ideas down we painstakingly affixed the combo pieces, knowing that any mistake would be reproduced and magnified by the metal casting process.

We tested materials, refined molds and the collection was rolling. Next up was shooting a lookbook as beautiful as the pieces we'd just created. Photo shoots are often where our hearts swell three sizes-- it's the first time we get to see our pieces the way the world will see them. And we were super lucky to recruit photographer Mikola Accuardi and local siren Sara Jackson-Holman to model the new collection. Insert mimosas, Frank Ocean and a lot of white.

And before we knew it Chapter's newest collection was ready to show to the world.

And why is the collection called Silvara?

A tiny Pennsylvania town (population 100, give or take), Silvara is where Thelma Brotzman, grandmother of owner/maker Erica, lived for decades with her husband, Elston, and raised their six children. This collection is dedicated to her, and the generous spirit and neverending love that helped make this collection possible. It's her memory that we want to honor with a collection that prizes timeless classics.